A protocol for separating jobs at a printer which is receiving a print job (file) from a network that does not provide job separation data, the job separation being based on delays in the delivery of the packets and the probable existence of a partial packet at the end of a job.
The NetWare (a network operating system for use in a PC environment) RPrinter is a network application layer protocol designed to receive a data stream from a NetWare print queue, managed by a PServer (a print server) program, to a network connected print device. This PServer has no concept of jobs, as is typical in the low end printing environments, it simply pushes data down to the remote printer. Thus, there is no job synchronization facility, such as an end of file indicator defined in the protocol. For a high end print service, job is a fundamental manageable entity of the system, and elaborate job management and spooling facilities are the key value-added features in the architecture. Although the concept of job exists in the NetWare print queue, the notion is generally lost through the stream based RPrinter protocol. Thus, there is no job synchronization facility, such as an end-of-job indicator, defined in the protocol. What is needed is a method of getting the printer to separate jobs while using a protocol that does not have an end-of-job signal.